Tradeshift acquires document integration platform Babelway

Today Tradeshift the supply chain payment and marketplace company announced the acquisition of Babelway. Tradeshift’s marketplace connects buyers and sellers with banks to finance trade. It’s also working on a blockchain trade finance platform that targets SMEs.

Babelway helps companies to integrate documents in a variety of formats, using an easy-to-use cloud-based EDI platform which supports multiple standards.

Earlier this year Tradeshift announced a $250 million fundraising at a valuation of $1.1 billion. The round was led by Goldman Sachs and Public Sector Pension Investment Board bringing total funding to date to $400 million.

Going forward the Babelway product will be offered as Tradeshift Link to help to integrate disconnected systems. It envisions the system making it easier for SMEs to connect with Fortune 500 companies.

“We believe that B2B commerce should be connected, digital, and flexible. We’ve been partnering with Babelway for over six years and in that time have seen the massive value their technology provides for our users,” said Christian Lanng, CEO and founder of Tradeshift. “This significantly extends the capabilities of our platform and takes the friction out of integration.”

Blockchain plans

Three months ago Ledger Insights spoke to co-founder and CTO Gert Sylvest about its blockchain plans. To date, Tradeshift helps big buyers like DHL and Unilever manage their supply chains. In doing so, all those companies’ suppliers create accounts on Tradeshift’s platform. So far there are 1.5 million suppliers signed up.

Additionally, Tradeshift has insight into the supplier relationships with buyers. It knows how many times they’ve transacted on Tradeshift and for how much. For trade finance that’s valuable knowledge.

Usually, banks want to see invoices they plan to finance. For the blockchain platform called Tradeshift Cash, the invoice information will be anonymized and tokenized by Tradeshift. The financier, not necessarily a bank, will receive credit rating data and information about the buyer-supplier relationship without knowing their identities. However, to participate in the platform, all parties will have to go through Anti Money Laundering and Know Your Customer procedures.

In February 2019 Hanson Wade is running the Blockchain for Global Trade Finance conference in London. A 10% discount is available with this code: BGTF-LI10. We’ve found Hanson Wade events have strong speakers, hardly any sponsor promotional content, and provide excellent networking opportunities.

Ledger Insights is an event Content and Media Partner but this is neither a paid message nor do we earn commission.